Collecting, thinking, sketching

In June of 2015 on a street in Bilbao, Spain, urban artist SpY created a piece of art that was made from €1,000 in coins. Spelling out the word “Crisis,” the artist used the shiny €0,2 bits to create copper-toned letters.

With the material and the arrangement both directly speaking to the message, the piece is both cohesive and powerful. Perhaps as an indicator of the actual financial crisis, the artist states that all of the coins disappeared in less than a day. from Design Faves

This work is relevant to Horizon Unfold – Migration which is a work also dealing with money and a comment on economy. It makes an impact with the size and the esthetics of the copper coins. Making it in 2 cent coins, glued on the wall make it even more to the point that the money crisis is so severe that people will take even 2 cent coins.

The placing of the work, the site, but also visually on the wall, it´s preciseness is a reminder for my own work. To make it work, these relations are important. Also it makes a point that part of the letters are so high up that people must use brushes and tools, work harder to get them.

This spring the Dutch institute works with loss of state, stateless with various artists and art students. Publication, documentations, program on their site. Brining in various critical perspective. Jonas Staal and others.

In this work (2006) Susanne Bosch engages people in different places in the city through an art performance of a card game about migration and work. I got interested in this work because of the playfulness of the performance and the space for communication it makes through the game and the cards. The graphic visualization of the cards are easy to read and gives layers of meaning when they are played out in the game.

1. Only when art reaches beyond the art world is it relevant. The power of art is in it´s relevance more that it´s being of art. Art can make it´s own relevance into any layers of the society. For me art is an exercise of making concerns that are in between, in the margins and has a latent potential and activate new narratives. Through making relevance, new questions arises.

2. Art has the function of creating conversations and turn into language, through which new meaning can be made. My art projects has the aim of triggering conversations that can create new questions rather than answers.

3. Art is not loyal to neither it´s own field or other fields. Art doesn’t need to operate in the axis of truth and fiction, but be free to operate on several levels and freely move in and out of different fields. This means that selections are based on other criteria than science can be made. For me this gives me freedom to explore various fields and use the materials with my own logics and concerns.

Certau’s text “Walking in the city” is taking us into different layers, sediments of how to interpret the city, and the development and planning of the city. The whole text is built on a perambulatory way of relating to the city.

An individual experience, part of everyday practice, is the starting point for Certeau to talk about complex issues around cities and how they work.

He relates the city to experience we all can recognize; walking in the city. By starting in the 107th floor of the World Trade building, he enters the topic of the city from a bird’s view, going into the visual and aesthetic of the city, before coming down to the city. The whole text is written like a walk where he changes perspective, discovers something new and makes twists and turns. As he is walking he don’t have time to dwell too long, before something else is catching his attention.

The practice of everyday life is here closely connected with the usage of space, how we use space in our practice of everyday. He says in the text “… spatial usage creates the determining condition of social life.” (p.105) This is where city planners, developers and others plan the use of the city, but how it is working is determinate through the citizens’ use and intervention in the urban space. In interventions in public space it can be essential to analyze how the space is used and how that affect social life. To install an artwork in public space, will effect the physicality of the space and therefore also the use of the space.

He use a part of the text to talk about urbanization, built on efficiency and profit that creates a waste, a segment in the city that is excluded. I understand this as groups of the citizens that are lacking access to the basic services of the society. Further on he referrer to the conflict of interest that are present in the city, which can be related to Chantal Mouffe and politics of agnostics. He is also talking about how the idea about the catastrophe is putting the population in panic as a way to administer the city. Also how surveillance control by becoming part of everyday rule.

An interesting part of the text is when he connects memory to place. Language is a reference use many places in the text, here memory of place is directly connected to language. The city is organized by names of streets and districts. Memory is connected to something that has been, by representation through the physical remains and traces. He brings also in how we relate to space in dreams, without being there physical. It shows that we can relate to space through memory and language. Walking in the city is actually walking in the memory, among phantoms of the past and legends, history. “In fact, the memory is the anti-museum: it cannot be localized.”

This layers of meaning and memories connected to place / spaces make the experience of public space individual and internal. It is a place where one relates to oneself, through experience and memories in relation to others. A walk in the city is not only a walk through the urban sediments, but also through the human tissue of the city.

Dear Data is a year-long, analog data drawing project using postcards by the designers Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec.

It´s related to my MA as they are using postcard as a form of communication. The continuity of the project is interesting and something also for me to think about. That could be something to think about and the fact of leaving a space to draw on one side.